Author(s): Huang W L
Chronic cough is an important symptom that has a major cause of gastroesophageal reflux, and asthma but there are multiple factors involved. In traditional Chinese medicine, problems in the Lungs can be caused by energy alterations in other organs. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that patients with chronic cough have energy deficiency inside the five internal massive organs mainly in the Kidney, leading to problems in the Lungs. Also, there is the necessity to prevent the exposition to external pathogenic factors, such as Cold and Wind, and Cold from foods that can lead to cough.
Methods: one case report of 42 years-old female patients with a chronic cough for more than 4 months that improves when she lay down and worse when she is upside. She went to a variety of medical doctors that did not find any problem in her laboratory exams. She went to my clinic and I asked about her daily eating habits she likes to use oranges recently but she does not have a desire to drink water. The maximum amount she drinks is 1 liter per day. I measured the energy of her five internal massive organs (Liver, Heart, Spleen, Lungs, and Kidney) through the radiesthesia procedure using a Wood pendulum.
Results: all internal massive organs were in the lowest level of energy. I asked her to avoid the ingestion of orange and Cold water and begin to treat her using Chinese dietary counseling, auricular acupuncture with apex ear bloodletting, and systemic acupuncture and began to replenish the energy of the internal organs’ energy using highly diluted medications according to the theory Constitutional Homeopathy of the Five Elements Based on Traditional Chinese Medicine and crystal-based medications. It was also advised the patient increase the water intake to at least 3 liters per day. The patient improved from her cough condition and she is having a normal life since the first ten days of treatment. The conclusion of this study is to demonstrate that patients with chronic cough have energy deficiency inside the five internal massive organs and invasion of external pathogenic factors through the environment and from wrong eating habits and the rebalancing of these energies using auricular acupuncture and replenishing the internal organs energy using highly diluted medications according to the theory of Constitutional Homeopathy of the Five Elements Based on Traditional Chinese Medicine and crystal-based medications is of paramount importance to treat the cause and not just treating the symptoms.
Chronic cough is a common symptom among patients and can frustrate both physicians and patients. The empirical treatment using inhaled corticosteroids is common but it is very important to do an accurate diagnosis of the problem [1].
Cough is a natural defense mechanism of the body to eliminate the secretion of the bronchial tree and elimination of foreign inhales particles. It is considered subacute when it lasted for 4-8 weeks and chronic when it lasts for more than 8 weeks [2].
Patients who smoke are advised to quit smoke and patients in use of angiotensin-converting enzyme should change to another class of medication [2].
Patients who smoke are advised to quit smoke and patients in use of angiotensin-converting enzyme should change to another class of medication [2].
The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that patients with chronic cough have energy deficiency inside the five internal massive organs of the five elements theory of traditional Chinese medicine, which are the Liver, Heart, Spleen, Lungs, and Kidney, and also can have entrance of external pathogenic factors through the wrong eating habits or through the exposition to Wind and Cold, and the treatment of this condition orientating the patient to avoid the exposition to these external pathogenic factors and avoid the ingestion of foods that have Cold energy such as Cold water or raw foods or raw fruits. The rebalance of these energies using auricular acupuncture with apex ear bloodletting, systemic acupuncture and replenishing the energy of these organs using highly diluted medications according to the theory of Constitutional Homeopathy of the Five Elements Based on Traditional Chinese Medicine and crystal-based medications is of paramount importance to treat the cause of chronic cough formation, in the energy level, that we cannot see by the naked eye.
One case report, L.E.V.S., 46 years-old female patient with a history of cough for four months. The cough is dry and happens only during the day and she sleeps all night. She only has a cough when she is standing or sitting but not when she is lying down. She went to do a consultation with a pulmonologist, and otorhingologist, and also, she looked for a gastroenterologist. The pneumologist did many tests on her and did not find anything. He asked her use an inhaler but she did not improve with this prescription. The otorhinolaryngologist did an exam by putting the probe in the nostril but did not see any abnormality or secretion, it was clean. The gastroenterologist asked for an endoscopy and she did not do so until the end of this manuscript.
She usually drinks water at room temperature, not ice water but only a little water, about 1 liter per day. She was drinking orange juice twice a week.
She went to my clinic to try another form of treatment and I asked her to measure the energy of her internal five massive organs using a radiesthesia procedure.
She went to my clinic to try another form of treatment and I asked her to measure the energy of her internal five massive organs using a radiesthesia procedure.
All her internal five massive organs were in the lowest level of energy, rated one out of eight. The treatment of her condition was first changing her dietary aspects orientating her to avoid the ingestion of some foods like raw food, such as fruits and vegetables, and avoid Coldwater. It was orientated to her to avoid the ingestion of oranges including orange juice I will be further discussing and explaning this approach in the discussion section. It also orientated her to increase the ingestion of water to about three liters per day instead of only one liter per day. It was advised her to dry the tangerine’s bark in the oven and make hot tea and drink it hot.
The second step in her treatment was to do auricular acupuncture with apex ear bloodletting and release the Cold that entered the Lung. After spelling the Cold, I begin to regulate the internal energy of the five internal massive organs (Kidney, Liver, Spleen, Lungs, and Heart). The auricular acupuncture points used will be shown in the discussion section.
The third part of her treatment was to replenish the energy of her five internal massive organs using highly diluted medications according to the theory of Constitutional Homeopathy of the Five Elements Based on Traditional Chinese Medicine. It was used Phosphorus to replenish the energy of Liver, Sulphur to replenish the energy of the Heart, Calcarea Carbonica to replenish the energy of Spleen, Silicea to replenish the energy of Lungs, and Natrum muriatic to replenish the energy of the Kidney.
The patient improved from her cough condition in her first week of treatment and never had a cough like it was. She is very happy with the results obtained with the treatment but still treating her energy deficiency situation for her whole life.
To understand the factors involved in patients with chronic cough, we need to associate ancient medical traditions, as recommended by Hippocrates (460 BCE - 375 BCE), the father of medicine. In one of his oaths, he said that “;foolish the doctor who despises the knowledge acquired by the ancients”; [3].
For this reason, in this article, I will associate the reasoning used by Western medicine with the thoughts of traditional Chinese medicine, that exists for more than 5000 years, to explain this subject [4].
Western medicine’s reasoning is focusing on the thoughts created by Galen, a Greek physician that lived 500 years after Hippocrates that exerts influences until today. According to him, all organs work independently and separately and do not exert influence on another organ [5].
In 1910, Western medicine changed its medical curriculum after the implementation of the Flexner report and they only considered scientific what could be proven by the laboratory or radiological level and could be seen by the naked eye [6].
According to Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), all the things that exist in our universe are composed of energy and this includes the human being. So, the part of the energy, that is usually not visible by the naked eye is not studied by Western medicine. It is usually doing the diagnosis only after the energy is materialized and the part that is still not visible, is usually not studied by medical doctors nowadays [7, 8].
To explain the different levels of diagnosis and treatment of Western and traditional Chinese medicine, I usually use a metaphor of the tree, that I am showing in Figure 1 [9].
In Figure 1, I am showing a tree that is divided into two parts, the part above the earth and the part under the earth. The part above the earth is composed of a trunk with several branches and coming out of each branch, you can see many leaves [10].
This part above the earth is representing what Western medicine is doing in the diagnosis and treatment nowadays, each branch means one medical specialty and each medical specialty is treating each disease represented by the leaves in their specialty, giving medications to treat the symptoms [5].
In 2006, I treated one specific patient and I will briefly tell you his history to you to understand what I want to say in this article [11].
This was a 70 years-old male patient, with a history of pain in both legs with no improvement only using anti-inflammatory medications. He searched for another kind of treatment and went to my clinic. Instead of treating his leg pains, I treated his energy imbalances (that was Kidney Yang energy deficiency because he was feeling Colder in his lower limbs) and after ten acupuncture sessions, he returned and said that he improved from his leg pain condition but he also improved from another condition that he did not tell me. He had been treated with high intra-ocular pressure for the last 40 years, with no improvement of his condition by only using eye drops and for the first time in his life, his intra-ocular pressure reduced from 40 mmHg to 17 mmHg [11].
After this case, I began to participate in many conferences worldwide to demonstrate that we need to treat the energy imbalances presented in the “;root”; of the tree, shown in Figure 1, and not just treat the symptoms presented by each patient, in the “;leaf”; level of each medical specialty [11].
You can see in Figure 1, that all kinds of specialties come from the same “;root”; and the symptoms presented by each medical specialty comes from the same energy imbalances presented in the “;root”; [12].
In traditional Chinese medicine, one disease can come from different energy imbalances and one energy imbalance can cause many different diseases [13].
So, in the “;root”; of this tree, you can see two theories, that is Yin and Yang theory and the Five Elements theory, shown in Figures 2, 3, and 4 [5, 10].
In Figure 2, you can see that Yin and Yang are two forces that exist in our universe and inside the body, that need to be in harmony and in equilibrium. The disequilibrium between them (when Yin is less than Yang or Yang less than Yin), you can see the formation of many diseases in any kind of specialty [10, 14-15].
For example, in Figure 3, you can see that when there is Yin less than Yang, the patient has hot flashes with hotness in hands and feet, very common in women with menopause symptoms. In the case of a patient who has Yang energy deficiency (Yang less than Yin), the patient can have Cold hands and Cold feet and a tendency to have liquid retention, bladder prolapse, rectum prolapse, etc [14-15].
In Figure 4, you can see the five elements (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water) of the Five Elements theory and one element represents one internal massive organ, such as the Liver, Heart, Spleen, Lungs, and Kidney respectively [9, 17].
In this theory, one element depends on the energy of another, whilest receiving and giving energy, as you can observe in the Generation cycle, in Figure 5 [9, 16].
In this Figure 5, you can see that the Liver is sending energy to the Heart and the Heart is sending energy to the Spleen. The Spleen is sending energy to the Lungs and the Lungs are sending energy to the Kidney. The Kidney is sending energy to the Liver, closing the cycle [17, 18].
But there is another form of control of the functioning of each other that is the Control Cycle, shown in Figure 6 [16].
In this Figure 6, I am showing that each organ can control the functioning of the other organ. In the case reported in this article, the patient was having a cough but the real problem was not in the Lungs but in the Kidney, as she does not like to drink water and one of the most important energy for the Kidney is the water that we ingest. According to the theory of Five Elements of traditional Chinese medicine, Lung is the mother of the Kidney and when there is a problem in the son (Kidney), the mother will suffer also (Lung) [13].
The second thing that was causing her cough was the entrance of external pathogenic factors through the wrong eating habits. According to Fei Bing Zhi Bing Ji (2011), the author of the book Pathomechanisms of the Lung, cough can result from the Cold overcoming the Lungs. In her case, she began to ingest orange, which is considered a Cold fruit and caused a cough due to the Coldness of the food. It was orientated her to use hot tea made with dry tangerine peel (that has the function to spell Cold from the Lungs) but not ingest the tangerine (because it has Cold energy) [19].
In her case, it was orientated her to drink at least 3 liters of water per day (approximately 1 liter per 25 Kg of the body) to increase the energy of the Kidney (the son of the Lung) and to avoid the ingestion of oranges or other raw foods or raw fruits (because raw vegetables and the majority of raw fruits have Cold energy) [16, 20].
According to Hippocrates (460 BCE - 375 BCE), the father of medicine, said in his oath that “;make your food your medicine and your medicine your food”;. So, in all my treatments, the first step is to change the dietary habits of the patients that are inducing energy imbalances in the five internal massive organs or to the balance state of the internal energy of Yin, Yang, Qi, Blood or formation of internal Fire. In her case, the real problem was caused by the lack of energy in the Kidney leading to weakness state of the Lung, generating cough. The treatment, in this case, is to tone the energy of the Kidney, to increase the energy of the Lung, treat the “;son”;, and treat the “;mother”;, as you can see in Figure 5 [3].
The questions that I usually use in all my patients to evaluate the energy deficiencies between them are shown in Table 1.
In Western medicine, they do not consider the influences of external pathogenic factors as inducers of diseases. For this reason, there are some diseases that can begin their formation through the entrance of these factors, such as the formation of flu-like symptoms. In traditional Chinese medicine, flu-like symptoms are caused by the entrance of Cold and Wind, as I am showing in the article written by myself (2023) titled Is It Necessary To Know Which Pathogen Is Causing The Flu Process In The Patient? and in the second article also written by myself (2022) titled What Do We Need to Know to Prevent and Control Nosocomial Infections Completely?- Part 2 [21-22]
In these articles, I am showing that the entrance of Cold and Wind into the body can cause a variety of alterations inside the patient’s body, in the energy level, mainly when the patient is with Zheng-Qi weak. Zheng-Qi is an energy produced by the Kidney and in research, I did in my clinic in Brazil, from 2015 to 2020, I concluded that 97,5% of all my patients do not have energy in the Kidney and for this reason, the majority do not have enough energy to protect the body against the invasion of external pathogenic factors, as I am showing in Table 2 and in Table 3 [5, 10].
Number 1- Liver; Number 2- Kidney; Number 3- Heart; Number 4- Lungs; Number 5- Spleen and pancreas; Number 6- Memory and concentration;Number 7- Spirituality.
According to Bing Di (2011), in the book Pathomechanisms of the Lung, when the Lungs energy is deficient and also, the Kidney’s energy is weak to receive the energy from the Lung, the patient can develop cough and panting, shortness of breath, shallow breathing, difficulty in breathing continuously and severe panting during physical activity [19].
The energy of the five internal massive organs of the patients reported in this article was at the lowest level of energy, as I am showing in Figure 7.
Figure 7: The results of the measurement of the energy of the five internal massive organs of the patient reported in this article
The measurement of the internal energy was done by measuring the energy of the chakras’ energy centers studied by Ayurvedic medicine. There are some studies in the literature showing the correlation of these chakras with the five elements of traditional Chinese medicine, as shown by Chase (2018), in the article titled The Geometry of Emotions: Using Chakra Acupuncture and 5-Phase Theory to Describe Personality Archetypes for Clinical Use [23].
The second step in the treatment of this patient was to release the possible external pathogenic factors using auricular acupuncture with apex ear bloodletting and in the second stage, it was to tone the five internal massive organs using the points shown in Figures 8 and 9.
In this patient reported in this article, the symptoms of cough improved when she is lying down and can worsen when she is standing. Therefore, these symptoms cannot be related to gastroesophageal reflux, which improves when the patient is standing and worsens when the patient is lying down in the bed [24].
What could be happening in this patient could be in the energy level, when the patient is lying down, the Blood flow to the Kidney improves increasing the energy of the Kidney, and reducing the cough. When the patient is standing, the Blood can be stagnated in the lower limbs and cannot return adequately to the upper part of the body decreasing the Blood flow to the Kidney, reducing the energy of the Kidney, and increasing in this case cough. As I explained before, the Kidney is the son of the Lungs and when the son is sick, the mother (Lungs) will be sick also. In this case, we need to treat the son (Kidney), to improve the mother (Lungs) [24].
When the patients have a cough, one of the orientations that I usually do is to drink water to improve the energy of the Kidneys.
In traditional Chinese medicine, the symptoms in one organ cannot say that the problem is in that organ as I am showing in the article written by myself (2022) titled Is It True That Kidney Failure Diagnosed At The Laboratory Test Level Shows That The Problem Is Really in The Kidney? [25]
The last step in this treatment was to replenish the energy of the five internal massive organs using highly diluted medications according to the theory written by myself (2020) titled Constitutional Homeopathy of the Five Elements Based on Traditional Chinese Medicine [26].
This theory was written when I began the homeopathy course in Brazil (2015) and during my course, I realized that homeopathy physicians were memorizing the functions of each medication but do not understand yet the mechanism of action of homeopathy medications. Using the theory described above, we can treat the “;root”; of the problem of the majority of diseases and the doctor will need to use only five homeopathy medications to treat the majority of diseases instead of decorating more than 2000 medications [26].
In this case, to treat the Kidney, I need to tone the energy of the Lungs (that was deficient in energy). But to tone the energy of the Lungs, I need to tone the energy of the Spleen. To tone the energy of the Spleen, I need to tone the energy of the Heart and to tone the energy of the Heart, I need to tone the energy of the Liver. To tone the energy of the Liver, I need to tone the energy of the Kidney [26].
The homeopathy medications used in this patient are described in Table 3. Also, I would like to show the crystal-based medication used to tone the energy of the five internal massive organs used in the case reported in this article.
I choose to use highly diluted medications instead of highly concentrated medications because of Arndt-Schultz Law (Figure 10), created in 1888 by two German researchers. In this law, they are affirming that the use of any kind of highly concentrated medications can reduce the vital energy of the patient or lead to the death of this patient. For this reason, it is necessary to use only highly diluted medications to replenish the energy of these organs to increase the energy and the immune system of the patient, because according to them, the use of highly diluted medications can increase the vital energy and this is the effect that we need to our patients nowadays, considered immune-deficient, as I am showing in the article written by myself (2021) titled Are We Vaccinating Immunocompetent or Immunocompromised People for COVID 19? [27, 28].
To finalize this article, I would like to say that all tools used in the treatment of this patient such as acupuncture and homeopathy are both considered medical specialties by the Federal Medical Council in Brazil since 1995 and 1980 respectively [29].
To understand the energy alterations in patients with chronic cough, we need to integrate the knowledge of Western and Traditional Chinese Medicine in the metaphor of Yin and Yang, as I am showing in Figure 11 [16].
The conclusion of this study is that patients with chronic cough have a diverse cause of formation including the entrance of external pathogenic factors through the environment or through the wrong eating habits. Also, it was shown that these patients have energy deficiency inside the five internal massive organs (Liver, Heart, Spleen, Lungs, and Kidney), and the treatment toning the energy of these organs especially the Kidney, considered the son of the Lung is of major importance to treat the cause of chronic cough formation. The use of highly diluted medications to this end is important to tone the energy of these organs according to the theory of Constitutional Homeopathy of the Five Elements Based on Traditional Chinese Medicine. Chronic cough symptoms are considered a systemic disease with a local manifestation so the holistic view of these patients is important to treat the cause of chronic cough and not just treat the symptoms itself.
Acknowledgment: I would like to thank my teacher of Chinese phytotherapy Dr. Lo Der Cheng (in memory) for all his teachings because without his teachings, it would be impossible to write this article.
Funding: I would like to say that this article was written without any funding or sponsors.
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